Busting out bad joints all over the place
[An unfinished fragment; an unfinished thought]
Red roses from a first love years later.
Two separate prom nights: ignored entirely,
dumped days before; golden high school culminates,
in a fumbled pass at virginity.
Abandoned one life for the next and never fit in,
then fell down for all the wrong reasons.
We watched great machines roll
the stones out as they packed in
the dirt. Waited, until the birds
came back and could be identified.
While the trees sprouted,
and grew into one another,
underground vines trundling down into
hand-made earth, and held fast.
Balanced by the moment, we
could no longer find the path.
By crossing our left and right together,
we climbed out the way we came.
Thursday begins as
one of those days
where my heart feels
as mottled as my skin
Freckled, sun damaged
scarred from old injuries
(a finger in a vacuum cleaner)
pock marked and
aged beyond its years.
Sam and M are doing poems this month, and I’ve been lax in mine even though I said to both of them I thought a poem a day was a good idea. At least I’ve managed one:
Wider Sidewalks
Today already feels outmoded,
antennas on roofs,
a last sip in the bottle,
a frowned-upon plastic bag,
even if the sun remains.
Awesome interview with poet Ken Babstock. I took a class he taught a couple of years ago and can attest to his general brilliance. Oh, and Airstream Land Yacht is an amazing book of poetry.
It’s Poetry Month and Knopf US sends out poem-a-day emails. Today’s selection is by Anna Akhmatova, “The door is half open…”
The poem is almost 100 years old at this point, and still, the metaphor of the door being half open, despite perhaps becoming cliched if we were to write it today, still resonates simply because of the gorgeous three lines that follow it. It’s the perfect example of how writing can always contextualize itself in even small places.
I’m fascinated by Ahkmatova, and I’ve had a giant biography sitting on my TBR pile for almost two years now. I’d like to say that I’ll get to it soon but with 1001 Books and other challenges, I think that it might be years still before it works up in the ranks.